Lol......... thought this was what we were talking about

I used to get involved in drives back about 30 years ago. It was enjoyable for many different reasons than hunting other ways are enjoyable. I don’t hunt that way anymore but this thread has made me want to get in on one again. Lol

Yep before the horns became more important and loss of the family farm so less open land it was big in WI. No less and less land do do them on. They were a hoot for sure and a successful way to move the few deer we had around here. Everyone celebrated together and even those not in your group were happy someone got a deer.
We still do small pushes on our own land, some leave their land for the first few days and drive all the public they can. We do not feel right about that and just hunt are and are glad we have what we do and purchased years ago.

used to be very popular after opening weekend of our 9 day gun season.
After thanksgiving especially, the last weekend of the season.
But then the vast majority of land in rural areas was farmer owned.
The farmers all pretty much allowed it.
Then we had a rise in slob hunters cutting or wrecking fences, driving in crop feilds and other disrespectful behavior.
Add to that more rural land owners saying no for various reasons.

Now its not common at all.

Really a shame, we need to really nail those does hard.

I have thought about calling it something different , like a slow push , because they way we did it was so much slower but then I feel like I would be giving it syllables like that George Carlin comedy bit , shell shocked and how it turned into post traumatic stress disorder.

"Crawl" maybe then it doesn't add syllables

I've heard people from other states call it "mooching." Not sure if that's quite right either.

We did it like that too, super slow push, almost like still hunting.

2 man drives are deadly here

We would do that with small groups. Park a stander on known escape routes and have one driver slowly ease in to the area pushed.

We would change up on the old fields part of the place that was a sixty acre flat. Line everyone up far enough apart to just keep the man left and right in sight then very slowly push across. Surprising the number of deer that went down the line rather than straight away.

I'm a firm believer that deer circle like rabbits if not pushed to hard. I've seen it both man driving and with dog drives. I learned the the best spot on a drive was back at the starting point waiting for one to slip back in after the push.

Put this doe in my cousins lap today. Bow drives can be wild

Bear drives used to be very popular on the 3500 acre timber company lease I hunt on. We were maxed out at 25 guys and used to drive the thickest nastiest clear cuts we could find. We’d flush them by jumping on brush piles almost like rabbit hunting.

It was usually pretty successful with 3 to 6 Bears being killed each season.

One year a writer with Outdoor Life participated and did a story that was published in the magazine.

Most of the participants have gotten older and quit and the bear drives they do now are much smaller and less numerous.

We also do deer drives on the property, but they are not a big organized event like the bear drives were.

I prefer silent pushes for deer. One guy still-hunting and another guy posted at a likely location can be very successful if you know the terrain and where the deer are likely to go to escape.

15 days ?? that's crazy. hardly any time to hunt. do you not have many deer in Iowa? I heard the states has lots of deer compared to us up here, probably due to the mega farms down there.

That's just our gun seasons. Bow hunting goes on for months, and there is an early and late muzzleloader seasons too. Plenty of deer here, too many in some places, but the CWD or whatever has lowered the population. You can hunt one deer a bow and one with a shotgun/straight walled rifle or muzzle loader. You can not hunt all seasons. You have to choose one of the gun or the other. Lots of other BS rules in there too...

https://www.iowadnr.gov/media/1700/download?inline

My group always hunts the first gun season, and usually are done by Sunday evening. Year before last we had all 18 tags filled by Saturday afternoon! Lots of deer in the part of southern Iowa we hunt.

I like to still hunt through the woods like I’m hunting squirrels. My youngest son will set up in known escape points. We typically do this in the middle of the week. It is very productive and I kill just as many if not more than my son. The deer he kills are usually just sneaking along so a good shot usually presents itself.

Sounds like you'd do well hunting up here. We've killed a lot of deer just like that over the years.

Had a guy almost kill me on a deer drive I was not in. I was on private property and they were on the neighboring property. From what I could figure out the guys shooting were about a hundred yards away walking down the property line. I was a hundred yards in sitting it a blind. The splinters where the bullet hit smacked me in the face. The bullet hit my blind 12 inches to the side of my head.

BE SURE OF YOUR TARGET AND BEYOND!!!???

I am against deer drives

It can be done safely. Know who you are hunting with, know the terrain and know where you can safely shoot. Pretty much like any other type of hunting.

We have never had large groups. The only type of drives we have done is more of a slow push. Last year on out ky hunt we jumped a group scouting. Oldest som and I walked around the outside of the woods and came in the back side with wind to our back slowly working to my youngest. I didnt see any of the deer but it worked. Heard the supressed shot and the youngest had one down.

Slow push with wind to our back gave him a shot at deer that were not in a huge hurry at all.

I'm not and my brother got shot on a drive. It was his fault though.

Four of us. Three standers one driver. First driver top of a slope on a road that had a long gentle curve around the hollow to be pushed. My brother 125 yards away in the deepest part of the curve and further positioned 15 yards off the road, me 200 yards further down the road. Dad, the driver, was slowly working his way up from the bottom into the hollow. All of us are carrying 12ga with buckshot.
Big racked buck pops out into the road in front of my brother he throws up fires and misses. Deer turns right and runs directly up the road in the direction of the first stander. Brother runs out into the road to get another shot, violating the first rule of being a stander to stay exactly where you are put. First stander seeing big buck fires and misses, never sees my brother behind the buck.
My brother picked up one pellet through the inside left calf muscle, and one struck the outside edge of his right foot and lodged after cracking that bone. The one through the calf would roll out his pants leg when we stood him up as it was stopped by his jeans.
It was the elevation that allowed 00buck to carry 125 yards. Had my brother been just a yard further back, the pellets would've landed harmlessly at his feet. Had he stayed put no hit at all.

The one in the foot had to be cut out. One slice through his calloused sole and it popped out, one stich to close. He was in a soft cast.

In the aftermath the first stander, a deacon with daddy, couldn't bring himself to come to church the next day. Mama left church to go to him to hug his neck and tell him to get the notion of selling his guns out of his head because he was expected to go hunting with the next weekend. He did and still a family friend to the point that I've introduced him as the fellow that shot my brother.

Deer drives need to have some pretty firm rules for safety.

Oh, after the hospital, brother insisted on going back and looking for blood that wasn't his. I knew exactly what that one did and found the tracks to prove it. The deer turned right passing within feet of my brother's original position before dropping down into the wash behind him then circling down the wash and back up crossing the slope above the first stander heading back to where he started. No blood or hair found. Brother was insisting on a do over, lol.